Learn From Their Mistakes

• Expect three years for your flipped mastery model to become part of the school culture. Year one is the most difficult, and year two is when you work out the remaining bugs. Don’t make the mistake of starting with all students moving at the same pace and then switching to the mastery model. This causes needless confusion for the students. Make sure you educate the parents at the start. Watch a few videos with the students with use of the pause and rewind buttons. Also teach note taking techniques. Expect each student to ask at least one question per video. Such questions can help you improve the videos. If you have a SMART Board, use it as a station that students can use. Other stations can allow for individual or group work and hands-on activities.

Assessment Issues

• Be sure to let students take all assessments including the final on their own schedule. You should find a lot of students helping each other. Teachers can form groups working on the same topic but don’t be surprised if groups spontaneously form. Formative assessment happens daily as students demonstrate their understanding. The authors require 75% scores on summative assessments before students go on, but even students that score 75% or better can retake tests for better grades. Computer-based testing with a system that constructs unique tests from banks of questions for each objective is needed to control cheating. The authors use Moodle and find text item construction to be an ongoing activity. Report card grades still required by the school are 50% based on summative assessment scores and 50% on how many units the student has completed.

Some Final FAQs

• The one unifying characteristic of all flipped classrooms is the desire to redirect the attention in a classroom away from the teacher and onto the learners and the learning. In order to do this, most flipped classroom teachers ask one question: What can I remove from my class time that does not require my physical presence, and what do I replace it with that will be enhanced by my presence? One increasingly common concern about the flipped class is that it could contribute to an even greater “digital divide” between the haves and the have-nots. So far, they have not had any students claim that they did not have access to either a personal or public computer, a portable device, or a DVD player.
• They check students notes in either paper or digital form daily to make sure they are watching the videos. Students who do not watch videos outside of class can do so in the classroom. This seems to motivate students to watch them at another time.

Share this: